ReviewFrom golf superstar to sex addict: Tiger Woods biography covers all the scandals in salacious detail

Tiger Woods
by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian
Simon & Schuster

3/5 stars

“She might have been blond and beautiful, but she wasn’t stupid.” That early sentence, about Tiger Woods’ ex-wife, Elin Nordegren, might make you feel like hurling the golfer’s biography across the room. But stick with it and you’ll find Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian’s book about one of the world’s most successful athletes ever (the first to exceed US$1 billion in career earnings) to be a rollicking read, if a guilty pleasure.

Written with the help of 250-plus people who “knew” Woods, it begins with that infamous car crash in 2009, when, being chased by his golf club-wielding wife, he ploughed his Cadillac into a tree. Although many believed that episode – which exposed Woods’ serial adultery – marked the begin­ning of his downfall, the authors show how the unravelling had started much earlier. Some of the blame is laid on Woods’ father, Earl, also a philanderer and troubled soul, although they are more forgiving of Woods’ Thai-Chinese mother, Kutilda, who declined to be interviewed for the book.

Included in the authors’ often salacious narrative are Woods’ sporting highlights, health setbacks, insecurities and narcissism, which “fed his self-destructive addictions to bodybuilding, painkillers, sleeping pills, and sex”.